ABSTRACT: What do Leon Trotsky, Emma Goldman, Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Nicholas Maduro, Adolf Hitler, Ralph Nader, Karl Marx, Harry Truman, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all have in common?
KEY WORDS: SOCIALISM, SOCIALIST, POLITICAL INSULTS, POLITICAL LABELS, AMERICAN POLITICS, SOCIAL DEMOCRATS
What do Leon Trotsky, Emma Goldman, Ralph Nader, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Carl Sandburg, Hugo Chavez, Adolf Hitler, Harry Truman, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have in common? They’re all socialists or at least have been “accused” of being socialists, along with Karl Marx, Henri de Sainte-Simon, Vladimir Lenin, Eugene V. Debs, Vachel Lindsay, Nicholas Maduro, and many, many others. In the US the label has frequently been a handy political insult, an often taboo but (paradoxically) close to meaningless label to apply to one’s opponent. Admittedly it’s rare if not unheard of to call a right-wing leader in the US a “socialist” even if s/he seems to have way too much in common with National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler, but it would make as much sense to do that as to call FDR a socialist, and his enemies lambasted him as one frequently.
Careless or malicious politicians slinging out labels perceived as insults have succeeded, over much of modern American history, in making it taboo to declare yourself a socialist, but mostly not for clear or logical reasons. From the late Democratic Congressman Larry McDonald (1935-1983) of Georgia to President Donald Trump, declaring your opponents as “freedom-hating socialists” seems to frighten voters effectively. The alleged connection, just as with those who insist that Venezuela is just the latest in an unbroken string of socialist nations that have failed, is that individual liberties can be curtailed under socialism. That has certainly been a real problem in some “socialist” nations, including the Third Reich and the Soviet Socialist Republics, but for the insult to be meaningful, the correct definition must be used. And there is no correct definition.
American conservatives usually attack opponents as socialists because their “liberal” opponents propose a fuller, more robust role for government as an appropriate approach to solving problems. The usual difficulty with this is that then the conservatives cannot meaningfully draw the line as to what they claim is or is not a step toward totalitarian socialism—national defense is OK, but not public education or highways? Police and maybe fire services (originally firefighting services were privately paid for, with fire service marks identifying the buildings that should be saved), but not national parks or libraries or Social Security or Medicare or the National Weather Service? FDR’s critics fell into this contradiction, which was especially glaring—and not very effective—at a time when so many Americans were desperate for some help.
Larry McDonald (my Congressman until the Russians killed him on 1 September 1983—really [you can look it up]—and a national leader of the rabidly anti-communist group, The John Birch Society)—was closer to consistent on this than most as he actually did publicly oppose public education and national parks, insisting that government should properly provide for defense and little else. I was disappointed when the Russians killed him, but mostly because I wanted to see him beaten at the polls.
To understand better what I mean, try a couple of imaginary exchanges. First imagine a conservative candidate (let’s call him Daryl J. Thomas) running against a progressive (we’ll call her Amy O. Clarkson):
DJT: “No one should vote for you—you’re a socialist!”
AOC: “What do you mean?”
DJT: “A socialist wants government to own all the means of production.”
AOC: “I don’t want that.”
DJT: “A socialist is against individual freedom and rights.”
AOC: “I’m not.”
DJT: “A socialist thinks common efforts through government to solve problems is needed.”
AOC: “Well, I do think common, government-organized, taxpayer-funded efforts make good sense for addressing many problems. Don’t you?”
DJT: “Well, some problems maybe, but not all the ones you seem to favor.”
AOC: “OK, so apparently we agree on everything except deciding exactly what problems are best addressed collectively. So, let’s put emotionally laden political labels aside and just debate which things government can best address. Which things do you oppose—national parks? A national weather service? Public education? Interstate highways? Air traffic control? Postal services? Fire and police protection? Healthcare? Medical research? Insurance to cover vasectomies or face-lifts?”
And from a usually different source (establishment neo-liberals) comes, sometimes, a different tack. Try this dialogue, perhaps as posted on social media between one of those liberals (call him ENL) and a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America (call her DSA):
ENL: “You call yourself a socialist, but that’s a misuse of the term.”
DSA: “How so?”
ENL: “Socialists want to abolish private property and end capitalism entirely.”
DSA: “I don’t want that and I’m a socialist—and there are millions of us, in Sweden, Canada, other countries, and all over the US who consider ourselves socialists and who want no such thing.”
ENL: “Well all of you are wrong about the label—you should call yourselves ‘social democrats’ instead, as people like you do in Europe. Karl Marx defined socialism as opposed to private property and as in favor of abolishing capitalism.”
DSA: “Karl Marx (1818-1883) didn’t invent socialism (arguably Henri de Sainte-Simon (1760-1825) did) and I don’t consider Marx the final authority on it. Words don’t have some divine, immutable meaning, and most words, especially political ones, change their meaning over time and in different places. How Europeans label themselves (not as consistently as you suggest, I’ll bet) doesn’t make their labels correct—just different. ‘Social democrat,’ if widely understood here, would suit me just fine—but if I did use it, the right-wingers would just adopt that as an insult instead of ‘socialist.’ Let’s talk about ideas and policies, not labels.”
Given my own history, and the nature of this publication, it is only reasonable to ask what the overlap between socialism, however defined, and secular humanism is. Paul Kurtz would, I am almost certain, have been fine with being considered a social democrat (though certainly not with the central economic planning and complete government economic control, for those who insist on that version of “socialism”). No one that I can think of would be likely to consider leaders and proponents of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as secular humanists—Hitler in fact rather ostentatiously invoked the Christian religion as intertwined with his ideology. But most American “social democrats” or Democratic Socialist of America members would likely be quite comfortable with secular humanism, even if they were religious themselves. The more orthodox, classically Marxist versions of socialism would be hard to reconcile with the tentative, decidedly unorthodox, undogmatic, more democratic ideals that American secular humanism has consistently embraced. For example, in his chapter on “The Democratic Ethic” in In Defense of Secular Humanism (Prometheus Books, 1983), Kurtz wrote, p. 77,
The democratic philosophy involves at the very least a commitment to the principles of liberty and equality. But if the principle of liberty is overemphasized, it may lead to an extreme laissez-faire individualism or anarchism, which may deny the rights of others; it may ignore the need for equality of treatment; and it may lead to an unjust society from which large sections of the population are excluded socially and economically. … an egalitarian society which is excessively protective of equal rights might so restrict individual freedom that the right of choice and initiative would be thwarted. Societies that emphasize egalitarianism and ignore libertarianism generally tend to become totalitarian, willing to trample on freedom of thought, action, and dissent.
In short, there is no obvious or necessary ideological connection between “secular humanist” and “socialist,” especially not following the more doctrinaire, dogmatic ideas sometimes called socialist. As a practical matter, there is in the U.S. substantial correlation or overlap between people who call themselves the one thing and those who call themselves the other. And, if the “socialist” label was not taboo in some camps and the “secular humanist” label was not taboo in others, the correlation and overlap would probably be greater.
One more thing: are people, “socialists” or not, who trust government more than others do, anti-freedom and anti-individual rights? The opposite is more often true, showing the false basis for the insulting claims. Religious folks, for example, frequently declare that they want government to protect (or at least not interfere with) their religious liberty. But on close examination, the liberty they seek is not the freedom to believe and express beliefs, but in fact government support and protection for their efforts to discriminate against or interfere with the liberty of those who believe differently. This and other supposed championing of freedom is parallel to the Southern Democrats of the first half of the nineteenth century, who loudly and frequently insisted they were protecting “States’ Rights”—the chief (if not the only) one, the freedom of the States to permit rich white people to “own” black people.
When a politician hurls an insult—“Commie!” or “Nazi!” or “Socialist!”—instead of grappling with actual issues, that is likely to signal the real threat to freedom.